Our best social scientific theories try to tell us something about the social world. But is talk of a “social world” a metaphor that we ought not take too seriously? In particular, do the denizens of the social world—cultural values like the Protestant work ethic, firms like ExxonMobil, norms like standards of dress and behavior, institutions like the legal system, teams like FC Barcelona, conventions like marriages—exist? The question is not merely academic. Social scientists use these different social entities to (...) explain social phenomena such as the rise of capitalism, the decline in oil prices, or the effect of unions on the sports labor market. But how could these explanations possibly work if social entities don’t exist? (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard’s 1996 book, The Sources of Normativity, attracted a great deal of attention. And rightly so. It is a highly engaging attempt to answer what she calls the normative question, which is the question of what could justify morality’s demands. Korsgaard’s latest book, Self-Constitution, develops and defends the broadly Kantian account of action and agency that hovers in the background of Sources, drawing out its implications for the normative question. In this review, we present the main lines of argument (...) in Self-Constitution, raising objections to both Korsgaard’s account of action and agency and her most recent attempt to address the normative question. (shrink)

Many have argued that unified theories ought to be pursued wherever possible. We deny this on the basis of social-epistemological and decision-theoretic considerations. Consequently, those seeking a more ubiquitous role for unification must either attend to the scientific community’s social structure in greater detail than has been the case, and/or radically revise their conception of unification.

In order for traditional rational choice theory (RCT) to explain the production of collective action, it must be able to distinguish between two behaviorally identical possibilities: one, that all of the agents in a group are each performing behaviors in pursuit of a set of individual actions; and two, that all of those agents are performing those behaviors in pursuit of a collective action. I argue that RCT does not have the resources necessary to distinguish between these two possibilities. RCT (...) could distinguish between these possibilities if it were able to account for commitments. I argue that successful rational choice explanations of collective action appeal to commitments, and distinguish this way of explaining collective action from a general class of explanations called plural subject (or team reasoning) theories. (shrink)

In order for traditional rational choice theory to explain the production of collective action, it must be able to distinguish between two behaviorally identical possibilities: one, that all of the agents in a group are each performing behaviors in pursuit of a set of individual actions; and two, that all of those agents are performing those behaviors in pursuit of a collective action. I argue that RCT does not have the resources necessary to distinguish between these two possibilities. RCT could (...) distinguish between these possibilities if it were able to account for commitments. I argue that successful rational choice explanations of collective action appeal to commitments, and distinguish this way of explaining collective action from a general class of explanations called plural subject theories. (shrink)

A review of Raimo Tuomela's 2013 book Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents.

Thomas Reid has the unusual distinction of arriving at a metaethical position very much like G. E. Moore’s via a route very similar to that employed by the Kantians. That is, Reid embraces a version of nonnaturalist moral realism by appeal not to open question-style considerations but to a particular account of agency. In this essay, we reconstruct Reid’s agency-centered argument for his constitutivist version of moral nonnaturalism, highlighting its commitments. Having presented Reid’s argument, we close by considering a prominent (...) contemporary Kantian view, namely, Christine Korsgaard’s, and identifying where, despite their common commitments, Reid and Korsgaard part company. The comparison, we suggest, is instructive because it allows us to see more clearly why the link between agency-centered approaches to ethical theorizing and nonrealist, constitutivist views of morality, such as Korsgaard’s, is deeply contingent. (shrink)

Thomas Reid's Essays on the Active Powers presents what is probably the most thoroughly developed version of agent-causal libertarianism in the modern canon. While commentators today often acknowledge Reid's contribution, they typically focus on what appears to be a serious problem for the view: Reid appears to commit himself to a position according to which acting freely would require an agent to engage in an infinite number of exertions of active power. In this essay, we maintain that, properly understood, Reid's (...) version of agent-causal libertarianism generates no regress of exertion. Our discussion begins by presenting Reid's account of free action and why it appears vulnerable to a worrisome regress. We then consider three attempts to address the regress in the contemporary literature offered by William Rowe, Gideon Yaffe, and James Van Cleve, which we find unsatisfactory. We then develop a solution to the worry—one that takes very seriously both what Reid means by an ‘efficient’ cause and his appeal to normative features when explaining action. We call it the ‘networked capacity’ view. (shrink)

The central question for this book is whether schools should attempt to cultivate patriotism, and if so why, how, and with what conception of patriotism in mind. The promotion of patriotism has figured prominently in the history of public schooling in the United States, always with the idea that patriotism is both an inherently admirable attribute and an essential motivational basis for good citizenship. It has been assumed, in short, that patriotism is a virtue in its own right and that (...) it is a foundational aspect of civic virtue more generally. Through an integrated historical and philosophical approach, this book demonstrates that there have been many and diverse attempts to cultivate patriotism in public schools in the United States and that they have been predicated on different conceptions of patriotism, citizenship, and learning. In order to assess these assumptions and evaluate the various practices of patriotic education, we address the nature of virtue and the motivational foundations of civic responsibility, and we frame a general approach to the ethics of education. We find that the history of attempts to cultivate patriotism in schools offers both cautionary and positive lessons. We argue that there is a virtuous form of patriotism and that an inclusive and enabling just school community may contribute to its development. Yet, we conclude that patriotism is not a virtue as such. We argue that civic virtue is what schools should aim to cultivate, and that civic education should be organized around three components of civic virtue, namely civic intelligence, civic friendship, and civic competence. We hold that virtuous patriotism is an appropriate responsiveness to a country’s value, and that such responsiveness is part and parcel of civic virtue that is also responsive to what has value beyond one’s own country. The book concludes with a defense of global civic education, arguing that it should promote global civic friendship and cooperation. The book situates its understanding of patriotism in the context of nationalist, populist, and authoritarian movements in the United States and Europe, and it mounts a spirited defense of democratic institutions that should be of interest to anyone concerned about the polarization of public life and future of democracy. (shrink)

Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern ...

This is the first philosophical study of artifacts that is book length. In it Randall Dipert develops a theory of what artifacts are and applies it extensively to one of the most complex and intriguing kind of artifacts, art works. He presents his own account of what agents, intentions, and actions are, then uses these notions to clarify what it is for an agent to "make" something. From this starting point, he develops a full theory of artifacts and other (...) artificial things - and, especially, a theory of art works and performances of art works as artifacts. He proposes a theory of nature and of the value of nature as what is essentially nonartificial. Two chapters are devoted to value considerations: merit in artifacts generally, and the evaluation of art works and performance art as artifacts or intentional gestures. Believing that a developed theory of action and philosophy of mind is necessary for a developed aesthetics and philosophy of art, Dipert relies on classical and contemporary research on agency, actions, and intentions, and on the intentionalist theory of mental objects of Brentano and Meinong. Dipert considers artifacts to be physical entities, but he also includes in the definition thoughts, utterances, and performances. This vast category encompasses everyday household objects and tools, streets and edifices, as well as communicative and artistic artifacts. Especially with regard to artistic artifacts, Dipert proposes a theory of expression and communication as actions and extensively discusses the problems of interpreting and recognizing actions, artifacts, and art works. (shrink)

Ethical dimensions of friendship have rarely been explicitly addressed as aspects of friendship quality in studies of children's peer relationships. This study identifies aspects of moral virtue significant for friendship, as a basis for empirically investigating the role of ethical qualities in children's friendship assessments and aspirations. We introduce a eudaimonic conception of friendship quality, identify aspects of moral virtue foundational to such quality, review and contest some grounds on which children have been regarded as not mature enough to have (...) friendships that require virtue, and report a qualitative study of the friendship assessments and aspirations of children aged nine and ten. In focus group sessions conducted in ten schools across Great Britain, moral qualities figured prominently in children's assessments of friendship quality. The findings provide evidence of children having friendships exhibiting mutual respect, support, and valuing of each other's good character. (shrink)

The last couple of decades has brought a renewed interest in American conservatism among historians. Yet most recent studies have focused on the emergence of neoconservatism after World War II and virtually no recent scholarly work has pursued the history of conservatism before the 1920s. Both Richard Hofstadter and Clinton Rossiter agreed that the late nineteenth century was an important watershed in the evolution of American conservative thought. Hofstadter argued that the new laissez-faire conservatism that became dominant during the Gilded (...) Age was remarkable in that “it lacked many of the signal characteristics of conservatism as it is usually found.” Yet some conservatives refused to accept key features of what Clinton Rossiter once branded this new “contradictory conservatism.” This essay focuses mostly on Protestant clerical intellectuals who dissented from the new orthodoxy and attempted to preserve older conservative principles. Against the laissez-faire conservatives' hyperindividualism, these dissenting conservatives stressed an organic view of the social order and the importance of mediating institutions such as family and church. To the others' secularism, they offered a social theory suffused with evangelical Protestantism. This analysis highlights where these dissidents differed from their fellow conservatives and seeks also to elucidate their alternative conservative vision of the American republic. Such a study serves to clarify just how profound an ideological shift occurred among conservatives during the Gilded Age and illuminates some of the persistent tensions within American conservatism still evident today. (shrink)

In this essay we will use mind as the term to designate the totality and manner in which our thoughts take place. We use the term brain to refer to the underlying mechanics, the substrate and the manner in which it supports the operations needed to carry out thoughts.

Taking the possibility of visual argumentation seriously, this essay explores how refutation might proceed. We posit three ways in which images can refute and be refuted in a mixed-media environment: (1) dissection, in which an image is broken down discursively; (2) substitution, in which one image is replaced within a larger visual frame by a different image; and (3) transformation, in which an image is recontextualized in a new visual frame. These strategies are illustrated in an analysis of three American (...) documentary films on abortion. (shrink)

John Calvin claims that the foundation of Scripture is the oracles and visions revealed to the patriarchs, transmitted through countless generations by an oral tradition that faithfully preserved these oracles. The oral tradition of the patriarchs also contains practices not found in written Scripture that are applicable to the church of Calvin day.

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers--not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists--violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view in Violence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule--regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations. -/- Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and (...) ethnography to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen--and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord--from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder--and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence. (shrink)

Provides an ideology-critique of Whitehead's and Hartshorne's metaphysics and demonstrates how their metaphysical principles reflect their personal commitments to the values and norms of the modern liberal political ideology.

Whole brain emulation aims to re-implement functions of a mind in another computational substrate with the precision needed to predict the natural development of active states in as much as the influence of random processes allows. Furthermore, brain emulation does not present a possible model of a function, but rather presents the actual implementation of that function, based on the details of the circuitry of a specific brain. We introduce a notation for the representations of mind state, mind transition functions (...) and transition update functions, for which elements and their relations must be quantified in accordance with measurements in the biological substrate. To discover the limits of significance in terms of the temporal and spatial resolution of measurements, we point out the importance of brain region and task specific constraints, as well as the importance of in-vivo measurements. We summarize further problems that need to be addressed. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. (...) Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

The focus of this research concentrated on ascertaining the presence of ethical climate types and the level of analysis from which ethical decisions were based as perceived by lodging managers. In agreement with Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988), ethical work climates are multidimensional and multi-determined. The results of this study indicated that: (a) benevolence is the predominate dimension of ethical climate present in the lodging organization as perceived by lodging managers, and (b) the local level of analysis (e.g. immediate workplace (...) norms and values) is the predominate determinant of ethical decisions in the organization.The implication of this study is that the knowledge gained from understanding that ethical decision making in an organization is multidimensional and multi-determined will foster understanding of ethical decision formation in the organizational context. (shrink)

Too many patients are injured in the course of care. Clinicians may mistakenly cause new harm to a patient or fail to take established steps to improve the presenting condition. Medical institutions within which they work may lack mechanisms to reduce errors or prevent them from harming patients. Many, perhaps even most, injuries are preventable, probably numbering in the hundreds of thousands a year for hospital care alone. Long ignored by medical practitioners and health-care payers and little appreciated by the (...) public, the problem of medical injury is finally receiving high-level policy attention. Much credit goes to the Institute of Medicine for its landmark report of November 1999, which marshaled the evidence about medical injuries and highlighted new approaches to systematic improvement of safety within systems of care. (shrink)

Too many patients are injured in the course of care. Clinicians may mistakenly cause new harm to a patient or fail to take established steps to improve the presenting condition. Medical institutions within which they work may lack mechanisms to reduce errors or prevent them from harming patients. Many, perhaps even most, injuries are preventable, probably numbering in the hundreds of thousands a year for hospital care alone. Long ignored by medical practitioners and health-care payers and little appreciated by the (...) public, the problem of medical injury is finally receiving high-level policy attention. Much credit goes to the Institute of Medicine for its landmark report of November 1999, which marshaled the evidence about medical injuries and highlighted new approaches to systematic improvement of safety within systems of care. (shrink)

This article is an evaluation of Christian views about Buddhism based on Paul Williams’ The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism . Studstill focuses specifically on five Christian claims about Buddhism: Buddhism prevents the recognition of objective reality and objective truth, Buddhism promotes egoism, Buddhism encourages immorality, Buddhism is quite possibly irrational, and Buddhism is excessively pessimistic. Studstill critically examines Williams’ defense of these claims and concludes that each is either false or highly problematic. As a corrective to (...) Williams’ errors about Buddhism, Studstill clarifies Buddhist views regarding suffering and egoism, the transformation of consciousness, the realization of truth, and the cultivation of altruism and compassion. (shrink)

The paper addresses several issues in the morality of cyberwar and cyberwarfare, defined as one nation's attacks on the governmental or civilian information systems of another nation. It sketches the diverse technical ways in which an attack may occur, including denial-of-service attacks and the insertion of various forms of malware. It argues that existing international law and widely discussed principles of Just War Theory do not straightforwardly apply to cyberwarfare, and many forms of cyberwarfare differ from previous forms of warfare (...) in neither injuring nor killing human beings, nor causing lasting physical damage ? but can nevertheless cause serious harm to a nation's vital interests. Another dissimilarity with traditional warfare is in the degree of knowledge of the identity of an attacker (the ?attribution problem?). The paper argues that cyberwarfare is not amenable to regulation by international pacts and that we can expect long periods of low-level, multilateral cyberwarfare, a Cyber Cold War, as a game-theoretic equilibrium is sought,. The paper laments the lack of a cyberwarfare policy, and concludes that it is only by applying game-theoretic principles that strategies can be discovered that are both moral and effective in suppressing overall harm to all parties in the long run. (shrink)

American health policy today faces dual problems of too little health coverage at too high a cost. The mix of public and private financing leaves about one seventh of the population without any insurance coverage. At the same time, the coverage Americans do have costs an ever-larger share of our country's productive capacity. This "paradox of excess and deprivation" results from the incremental approach the U.S. has taken to promoting incompatible policy goals of increasing health insurance coverage and medical quality (...) while trying to control costs, without squarely confronting tradeoffs. This essay examines the record of incremental developments and draws lessons for current efforts at reform. (shrink)

American health policy today faces dual problems of too little coverage at too high a cost. The mix of private and public financing leaves about one seventh of the population without any insurance coverage. At the same time, the coverage Americans do have costs an ever-larger share of our country’s productive capacity. The U.S. pays well above what other countries pay and what many people, health plans, businesses, and governments want to pay. This “paradox of excess and deprivation” results from (...) the incremental approach the U.S. has taken to promoting incompatible policy goals of increasing health insurance coverage and medical quality while trying to control costs, without squarely confronting tradeoffs. This essay examines the record of incremental developments and draws lessons for current efforts at reform. (shrink)

Whole brain emulation aims to re-implement functions of a mind in another computational substrate with the precision needed to predict the natural development of active states in as much as the influence of random processes allows. Furthermore, brain emulation does not present a possible model of a function, but rather presents the actual implementation of that function, based on the details of the circuitry of a specific brain. We introduce a notation for the representations of mind state, mind transition functions (...) and transition update functions, for which elements and their relations must be quantified in accordance with measurements in the biological substrate. To discover the limits of significance in terms of the temporal and spatial resolution of measurements, we point out the importance of brain region and task specific constraints, as well as the importance of in-vivo measurements. We summarize further problems that need to be addressed. (shrink)

I take Newton’s arguments to inverse square centripetal forces from Kepler’s harmonic and areal laws to be classic deductions from phenomena. I argue that the theorems backing up these inferences establish systematic dependencies that make the phenomena carry the objective information that the propositions inferred from them hold. A review of the data supporting Kepler’s laws indicates that these phenomena are Whewellian colligations—generalizations corresponding to the selection of a best fitting curve for an open-ended body of data. I argue that (...) the information theoretic features of Newton’s corrections of the Keplerian phenomena to account for perturbations introduced by universal gravitation show that these corrections do not undercut the inferences from the Keplerian phenomena. Finally, I suggest that all of Newton’s impressive applications of Universal gravitation to account for motion phenomena show an attempt to deliver explanations that share these salient features of his classic deductions from phenomena. (shrink)

Shuford, Albert and Massengill proved, a half century ago, that the logarithmic scoring rule is the only proper measure of inaccuracy determined by a differentiable function of probability assigned the actual cell of a scored partition. In spite of this, the log rule has gained less traction in applied disciplines and among formal epistemologists that one might expect. In this paper we show that the differentiability criterion in the Shuford et. al. result is unnecessary and use the resulting simplified characterization (...) of the logarithmic rule to give novel arguments in favor of it. (shrink)

The main focus of this book is the normative or ethical aspects of sustainability, including matters of justice in governance that is important to sustainability. The idea of sustainability is widely perceived as having a normative dimension, often referred to as equity, but the character of this normative dimension is seldom explored. The book aims to fill this gap in the literature of sustainability. It proposes a conceptualization of sustainability that is geared to clarifying its essential ethical structure. It frames (...) sustainability in terms of the capacity of natural systems to provide opportunities to live well, as well as the conduciveness of human practices and systems to preserving such opportunity into the distant future. It develops the idea of sustainability as an art of preserving opportunity to live well – an ethically and scientifically grounded political art of living well together without diminishing opportunity to live well in the future. (shrink)

Cellular differentiation is often accompanied by the expression of specialized plasma membrane proteins which accumulate in discrete regions. The biogenesis of these specialized membrane domains involves the assembly and co‐localisation of a spectrin‐based membrane skeleton. While the constituents of the membrane skeleton in non‐erythroid cells are often immunologically related to erythroid spectrin, ankyrin, and protein 4.1, there are structural and functional differences between the isoforms of these membrane skeleton polypeptides, as well as highly variable patterns of expression during cellular differentiation. (...) We consider this heterogeneity of structure and expression during development in the context of the hypothesis that non‐erythroid spectrin, ankyrin, and protein 4.1 are involved in the formation of specialized membrane domains. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. Second, (...) RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking lays out a troubling view of the world which holds true today much as it did at the time of the speech: "The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. This relation of man to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in (...) the seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was altogether alien to former ages and histories" (50). As an architecture professor in an age of modern technology, I believe it critical that design students cultivate an ability to see more comprehensively and learn how to think more meditatively (as Heidegger later suggests). Coming into a state of attunement with context, culture, and environment must be considered to be the most basic criteria for building in the world, as these are the elements that preserve the feeling and identity of ‘place’. Considering being-in-the-world as a stance that necessarily moves more toward complex understandings of the environment, this paper outlines an effort given to the pedagogical implementation of Martin Heidegger’s description of the phenomenon of ‘world’, the three-fold structure for Being-in as a means of teaching students a more attuned comportment toward place, building, and site. I will discuss how these ideas were used in an preliminary design exercise, then clarified and elaborated through a lecture on Terrance Malick’s film The New World. (shrink)

2 Enoch 58–59 provides an esoteric and somewhat eccentric delineation of attitudes toward the mistreatment of animals within some sect of Egyptian Judaism, in all probability. Three attitudes, having to do with the mistreatment of animals in failing to feed them properly, the wrongful binding of animals for sacrifice, and possible secret sexual exploitation of animals, are delineated along with warnings regarding the effects of such treatment on the human soul at the great judgment. This linking of how humans treat (...) animals with how humans will be judged in “the great age” is unique in the literature of this period and demonstrates a deep concern for animal welfare that has been largely dormant in many facets of religion until more recent times. (shrink)

Corporate scandals brought the issue of corporate governance to the forefront of the agendas of lawmakers and regulators in the early 2000s. As a result, Congress, the New York Stock Exchange, and the NASDAQ enacted standards to improve the quality of corporate governance, thereby enhancing the quantity and quality of disclosures by listed companies. We investigate the relationship between corporate governance strength and the quality of disclosures in pre- and post-regulation time periods. If cross-sectional differences in corporate governance policies affect (...) the quality of financial disclosures, the quality of information available to analysts varies with such policies. Specifically, higher quality disclosures, produced as a result of strong corporate governance, should lead to more accurate and less dispersed analysts’ forecasts. Our analysis suggests that voluntary implementation of stronger corporate governance enhanced the quality of disclosures in the pre-regulation period; however, exceeding current corporate governance standards does not appear to result in higher quality disclosures post-regulation. These results suggest that SOX and the stronger regulations enacted by U.S. exchanges were effective in reducing variation in the quality of financial information available to investors. (shrink)